I don’t know why, every year around this time when it comes to celebrating Christmas I just can’t help reminiscing the memorable Christmases that I have had in my childhood days. How happy days they were! Christmas cards and Christmas carols, Christmas cribs and Christmas gifts! Yes, it was the most exciting time of the year, a memorable period always to relish in my heart. I think the saying is very true, “our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and we are better throughout the year for having in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
Gone are the days now!! Unfortunately, over the years things have changed, and changed drastically. The cheerful “Merry Christmas” of Yesterday has been replaced by today’s all inclusive “Happy Holidays!” In the minds of many people, we celebrate “holidays,” and no more holy days. Not only is Christ not at the center of the celebration, he isn’t even considered to be a reason for the season! Oh yes, he has been very well replaced by the Santa Claus and the Befana.
What do I mean? I am referring very well to the commercialization of Christmas that surrounds us today. There is a great frenzy around the time of Christmas, all buying gifts and exchanging gifts, looking out for the discounts in the market to go for a new car, a new TV set, and what not!! The same is true reading the clues in our culture of Hollywood Christmas stories, casual comments, Christmas cards, even some sermons. All trying to perpetrate one single meaning of Christmas: “Christmas is the celebration of love, generosity, benevolence, kindness, brotherhood, and familial bonding”. Yes, I wouldn’t have any objection to this meaning of Christmas.
But my question is, is that, in fact, the true meaning of Christmas? No, I dare to say it is not….. The true meaning of Christmas is not about man loving man, means to say, human loving human. The true meaning of Christmas is about God loving Man. It is about God giving the most amazing and spectacular gift of his love to us the human beings. This is what we celebrate in Christmas. We often glory in Man’s search for God. But little do we realize that it is not man’s search for God but rather God’s search for man. The first initiative always comes from God, it is God who loved us first. The post modern thinker Emmanuel Levinas would sya “this relationship is asymmetric. It is the Greater, the Fullness, the Infinite who reaches out to the lesser, the lack, the finite.” This is the beauty of this relationship with God.
I think, our Christmas celebrations will have a better meaning when we are ready to look at Christmas in this light of God coming to meet man. The Gospel of John reminds us: “God so loved the world that he gave us his only son…”(3:14) As we look at the babe in the Crib on the Christmas night, I think we would do well to recall to mind the self-annihilation that God underwent for love of the human being. Today in this world of individualism and tight competition for self-realization God sets a wonderful example in front of the human being. Today humility is seen as a virtue of the weak and the Beatitudes of Christ are being re-written day by day as “Blessed are the powerful and mighty for theirs is the earth.”
But then, what is my response to this example that God sets in front of me? I wish I find a response to this intriguing question as I celebrate the Christmas this year. In my merriment and enjoyment let me be convinced that Christmas doesn’t become Christmas if my egocentrism remains unquestioned and unchallenged. But instead Christmas will become a meaningful event in my life if I allow myself to be transformed through a process of self-emptying. I wish that it really happens!
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